The Mystery of the Ripper of Cedar Village
by cgal120
Summary: A series of murders. Unfortunate accidents. No witnesses. No suspects. No obvious clues. A group of teenagers smart enough to crack the puzzle. A secret their village has kept buried for centuries. Nyotalia. Multiple pairings. Character death. UKxFem!US.


Dear Readers

Before you begin to read the tale that I have prepared for you, I hope that you will take this moment to heed what it is I really have to say. All of the events being told to you no matter how you are reading this are entirely true. It was tasked upon to chronicle the events as they happened – a small project amongst friends which started as a purely innocent way to help us recall in future times how we spent our college days…

I must admit that I wasn't inclined to publish this story – but it was suggested to me as the best possible course of action… Though I say this, I am still worried even at this point what the repercussions of this will be… The story that you are about to read, though it is mysterious and exciting, is also very dangerous and very few people truly know what really happened… I hope that you bare this in mind as once you start, once you hear the truth, it will be very difficult for you to be able to turn back.

**OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO**

_**Part One**_

"Happy birthday, bro!"

I smiled at my older brother as he walked into the living room on the morning of the first of July – I don't really know why I decided to take notes at that time of the day when we were the only ones there but it seemed like a fitting start to the day. Mom was sat on the recliner with a large smile on her face – though it was mixed with a hint of sadness that her oldest child was now 18-years-old. Matthew, my older brother, walked into the room with a look of genuine surprise on his face as a batted one of the blue _18_ balloons at him from across the room.

Matthew and I lived in a large village in the south of England with our mother, Emily. We had moved to the UK with both our parents at the age of 6 and 7-years-old but our father, George, sadly died when the September after my 10th birthday. The village that we had moved to was filled with a lot of secretive and peculiar people – everyone seemed to have story behind them, even the younger people like us, but on the other hand there were those that were so simply normal that I wondered what stories could they have kept hidden behind their masks.

I stood and pulled my brother into the room, grinning as he chuckled at my enthusiasm. I was like it with everyone's birthday – it was just something in me that liked to see other people happy. Matthew sat down on the floor beside his presents and began to opening all of the cards that he had received first. I kept glancing over at Mom as he laughed at messages from family members and friends, her smile still on her face contrary to her sad eyes. I understood why she was so sad – Matthew was 18 and I was soon to be 17, many big birthdays being missed by my father after his death… It wasn't my father's fault so I never blamed him for a single second – cancer was a heart-breaking disease…

Watching Matthew opening his presents to see games, money and _18_ themed gifts made me ponder to myself about the slight diversity of ages in the group that we hung around in. I found myself lucky that my brother and his girlfriend, Katyusha, were the nice type of people who didn't find it weird hanging out with the little sister. The age range for our group ranged between 16 and 20 – me being the baby of the group and Antonio Carriedo being the oldest. I wasn't going to be 16 for much longer though! My birthday was only 3 days after Matthew's! They all joked that I was the baby still though…

We were all going out during the day as a group to celebrate Matthew's birthday then he was going to be spending the evening in town with Kat now that he was legally allowed to drink at clubs and pubs.

"Thanks, Amelia," Matthew smiled, hugging me out of my distracted thoughts as he finished opening the gift that I had got him. I'd been working hard at my weekend job all year to be able to save up the money to be able to get him the new iPod that he had been going on about – it seemed that my hard work was appreciated.

"That's okay, Mattie," I replied, hugging him back. I think that Mom was most appreciative that Matthew and I had always gotten along since we were little. He was my big brother and had always been there for me when people had tried to pick on me and I had done the same in return for him.

"Oh, and thank you too, Mom!" laughed Matt, moving across the room as Mom coughed pointedly and jokingly. I watched them with a fond smile on my face, happy that I had a family that, despite being so small, had a really strong bond.

I know that how I've been writing this seems pretty peculiar – but that was just the way things had turned out. For the longest time I had been writing stories about random adventures and such, and when my friends had found out they had chipped in for a whole new notebook for me to create the story of our college adventures! They wanted me to keep a diary of everything, the littlest events to the largest of road trips – but to write it out as a story so that we could look back on those days and think about how we were and how we had changed over the years.

As pen it hit paper, I had to admit to myself that this was going to be a very enlightening yet embarrassing thing to do as I was most comfortable writing in a first person format – meaning that the story of our lives was going to be told from my perspective. My feelings were being put down for them to see but I knew that I could trust them to respect that.

I got up from my seat and walked over to the front door as the doorbell rang, knowing that it was going to be our friends. The day had been arranged so that the times were comfortable for everyone – some of us had work to get too or other commitments but when it came to birthday we did whatever we could to all be around for each other. Opening the door, I grinned at the large group outside and stepped aside to let them into the building. Making sure there was no one else after them, I took the opportunity to look out at the street.

That was another reason why I found the village so secretive – every house, and I mean _every_ house, was built separately. Other places in the country, a fair few of the homes were built right next to each other, touching wall to wall. But here there was gaps and fences separating each home from the next – and some of the walls and fences were built to such heights you would have to use a wheelie bin to be able to climb on to see over the top.

Shutting the door after a moment of being nosey, I walked back into the living room and smiled exasperatedly as our friends swarmed around Matthew – giving him birthday beatings as well as their cards and presents.

Katyusha Braginskaya, Lovina and Feliciana Vargas, Ludwig and Gilbert Beilschmidt, Elizabeta Héderváry, Arthur Kirkland and Antonio Carriedo. A varied cast of characters that bounced off one another as though they had been created as some part of international comedy. Friends and couples made up the group – as well as the odd few that popped up on the odd occasion from college – but this was us! The motley crew, the trouble makers, the random kids trying to make names for themselves.

I stood aside and watched as Matthew laughed with them, opening more presents. It was nice that the attention was on him for a change – he had often commented that when I was in the room not a lot of people actually took notice of things he said or that he was actually there at all. I didn't want to overshadow him on his birthday so knew that keeping quiet and stepping to the side was the best decision I could have made. I glanced up as Arthur came and stood next to me, smiling a little before looking back at my brother.

"You're being awfully quiet," said Arthur, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. I shrugged.

"I want Mattie to have a nice day," I replied, glancing up at him again.

"Matt would have a nicer day if you were acting like yourself, surely?" Arthur countered, nudging me. I rolled my eyes and nudged him back – Arthur was 19 and seemed to have a split-personality. One minute he was mature and making sure everyone was okay, the next he could be furious, and the next he was sad. Luckily for me, he was mostly happy but he did have a habit of taking typical gender roles into way too much consideration.

"He told me sometimes people forget him when I'm around so today will be all about him," I said, smiling at him honestly. "It's nothing to worry about really, I'm just not going to be loud or too obnoxious."

"To be fairly honest, you shouldn't have to change to make someone happy," Arthur said, shrugging his shoulders. "You should be accepted by the people around you for who you are, not what they want you to be."

Before I could answer, he walked back into the main part of the room with the others to shake Matt's hand as he had just opened his gift. I sighed to myself and wandered back over to them, putting on a smile again to try and rejoice in the celebrations once more.

**OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO**

About an hour later we had started to trek through the village to get to the bowling alley. Matthew had said that he wanted to spend his birthday doing something normal with us – nothing fancy or expensive just fun. So Lovina had suggested we head out to the bowling alley in the shopping district of the village to play a few rounds before we had to split up. All of us agreed to the idea as it was something that even Feliciana, Ludwig and I could do without having to be ID'd…

So after a while we had got to the alley and into the lane that we had booked a few days before, changed into our provided shoes and started our best of 3 match. The thing about us all being relatively the same age but from different countries meant that we were incredibly competitive. They had the addition of Eurovision, which Matthew and I couldn't be competitive for as we had no nation involved, but the Olympics had been something we all couldn't help but scream and shout over.

I can proudly say that I was the champion of all three matches, though Arthur gave me some steep competition. He always was the one that gave me the biggest challenge, always trying to beat me at everything just to wind me up. Sometimes he won and I would hold my hands up and say that he was the better player, but this time I jumped up and down on the spot and poked my tongue out at him.

"Always so gracious in victory, I see," he smirked.

"She's always been the same," Matthew laughed, dodging out of the way as I tried to hit him with my bag. Feli looped her arms around my neck and leaned on my back, pulling me backwards slightly.

"How are you so good at bowling?" she asked. "My balls kept going into the gutter…"

"I just aim well," I chuckled, holding her arms so she didn't choke me.

"Oh."

"What are we going to do now?" asked Antonio, putting his arm around Lovina's shoulders.

None of us had any idea what to do but before we could come up with any suggestions we were distracted as Gilbert ran back over to us having gone to the bathroom.

"Guys! Guys!" he shouted. "Some guy just said that a body was found by Cedar Lake!"

"Shit!"

"No way!"

"Let's go check it out!"

We returned the bowling shoes quickly and got given back our own, putting them on our feet before heading out of the alley to make our way to the river. It wasn't too far away and we seemed to be on the same side as the body had been reported to have been. The river ran right through from the woods from my home straight through the back area of the village to the shopping district.

The whole area was being swarmed by people trying to be nosey like we were, but the police had been quick and had taped off the scene to make sure people were keeping their distances. From where we were none of us could see what was going on at the bank of the river, so as Matthew was the tallest he lifted me up onto his shoulders so I could try and tell them what was going on.

The first thing I saw was the amount of blood on the grass and the body… The long blonde hair of the victim was soaked with blood and the body itself had been badly mutilated it was hard to say what wound had actually killed them. I got the biggest shock as the police over-turned the body, moving the person from their front to their back… the head flopped to the side, lifeless green eyes staring right at me.

"Matt… Matt… Matt… Put me down… NOW!"

Surprised, Matthew put me down again and looked at me worriedly, holding my shoulders as I shook. "What is it?"

"It's Fel… Felka Łukasiewicz…"

"What?" blinked Arthur in disbelief.

"Felka Łukasiewicz… she's been murdered…"

_**Notes:**_

**Welcome to my newest series… I'm just writing what I feel despite other stories still being incomplete. I hope you understand that and be patient with me – but as I writer when I feel a story I can't concentrate on another until I have simply the first/another chapter of another sorted.**

**So as I stated on my Tumblr, the full genre listing for this story is actually**_** Mystery, Romance, Drama, Supernatural, Suspense, Angst, Friendship**_** so I'm sure you can imagine just how many twists and stunts I'm going to pull with this story :)**

**And just to be clear, Felka is Fem!Poland – tomboy extraordinaire! So yeah. Feliks and Felka are pretty much the same name really, they both mean lucky… which Poland didn't really seem to be since I wrote them into a story… Oops.**

**Well, enjoy and see you soon! **


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